Awakening Manhattan
by NoTaleTellsAll
Summary: She's under the protection of Brooklyn.However she knew Manhattan better than anyone for it was her name.Its time both the city and her are awaken.Though Conlon would like it otherwise only the infamous Jack Kelly can do so, for he is her story.2Acts2come


A/n this is my first Act there are 2 yet to come maybe more. I do not own Newsies and the only character that is mine is Manhattan. i am trying to remain true to characters but sometimes a story takes a life of its own. So for that i am not sorry but if it bothers you i will apologize. Enjoy and let me know what you think. R&R

Awakening Manhattan

Brooklyn 1909

Nobody knew when she came to be there, or where she came from. She just was there. Still nobody seemed to care that she was the only girl among the boys. Like a ghost she drifted through their lives, or so it seemed to them. The only time she came alive was when she opened her mouth and told the tales of time long past. Sometimes there would be a book and other times her voice seemed to take on a life of its own, weaving them tales that brought them closer to who she was, than any of them would have thought. It was these tales that hurt her the most.

Sitting on her window frame she watched the newsie leaders rise and fall, the newspapers change hands, names and authors, and saw the life and death of the people in the streets. All the while the hustle and bustle of the newsies and people in the street drifted in through the window. Their voices rising to the tops of New York skyscrapers and falling as the hours of days progressed, shouting headlines and selling products with such exuberance for life. With a far away expression she'd tread inwards with thoughts and follow threads of tales and dreams. Talking really only to the curious young and to a stray now and again, her voice was strange even to her own ears. She was often known to disappear, maybe it was into herself. Maybe it was that that allowed her to go through their lives unnoticed. No one truly knew. Not that she was old, she was young in adult standards but it was the eyes that gave her the look of age. The blind look at times that seemed to go to ones bones. Yet no one really knew me, not even myself. I had lost that part of me a long time a go. It had gone asleep forever.

It wasn't that life was a horrible thing to live or even that my past was a horrible thing to remember. It was that dreams and stories in my head were easier to get lost in than come out of. I'd spend days in my mind, never realizing that life was going by or that I wasn't already living it. It may seem weird that I let life drift by with no more remorse and thought then drifting sands but I didn't see the point of being a part of the story when I could simply watch it unfold. Like book pages unfurl a tale. I didn't comprehend life because I had already lived what I thought I was meant to live.

Days were just measurements of time but it was the sunsets that captivated me. The still frames of beauty that stopped the world for a few seconds of everyday, was what would bring me out of my world of reverie. Sitting on the roofs of Brooklyn looking out over New York, I'd awaken. As night fell I would come from where I had been most of my life and watch life like a conscious being and life would rise in me. There is no way to explain how the void was filled in these mere moments, but what surprised me more than an unexpected twist in a story, was when something other than a sunset roused me to life.

As winter drew near my days by the window grew cold. Yet there I sat with a ratty old blanket over my shoulders, encasing my body. The droning of voices filled the air and occasionally bits of conversations and laughter would ease into my head. The noise comforted and lulled me eating away the deafening silence and memories in my head, that every so often unraveled my tales. Leaning my head against the frigid glass, I watched my breath slowly fog up the window, with trendles of frost being left behind after it disappeared. The flicker of shadows and light glazed on the window and etched a dance in my head. As time passed the noise became sound breaking, lifting my head with a shiver I look towards the sea of movement, only blurs in my vision. Like when you look up from a book after concentrating on it and your eyes have to adjust to the real world. Except mine never does. It looks like that no matter how long I look at reality for.

Not really expecting to see anything I turned my gaze away and concentrated on the tatters of the blanket. The fraying ends entwining and intertwining into the simple yet complex weaves of the fabric and then interrupted by a jagged tear to start all over again, entwining and intertwining. The wind blew outside rattling the windows and threatening rain. Its breath slipped through the crack and the thin blanket, slowly creeping down my spine.

"Ghosts are walking over my grave" I murmured to myself as another shiver took my bones. A heaviness settled on my shoulder and the warmth spread across my skin as tingles raised the hairs on my arms. Looking at my shoulders a battered brown jacket settled lightly there, smelling of dirt and age. Raising my eyes I stared at the face before me. The face needed no focusing, it was vivid the moment I turned, while everything else around him was still blurred. He stood there with a charming half tilt of his lips, like he was on the verge of smiling yet the amusement was not worthy yet.

"Tell us about it" his eyes challenged me, though I didn't know until later what he was challenging me to do. But his voice brought a grin to my face. Slowly I shook my head at him.

"Hello Jack" I said casting my eyes downwards looking at his jacket and the faint scars that were etched into it. "I believe this belongs to you." I went to shrug out of it but his hand on my shoulder stilled me. And my eyes followed the hand and arm to his face.

"Your eyes are glazed with the cold. Wear it until you warm up, then you can hand it over. Until then I give up my title to it." I blinked up at him and pushed a strand of short hair out of my eyes.

"Its been awhile Kelly." I said after a few minutes of silence. Studying him like I'd studied no one else. I noticed few changes, except that of age and experience. I hadn't noticed the hush that had fallen over the others in the small room and eventually I started to feel their eyes focused on me, though they were all still out of focus.

"Tell us about ghosts." He said. Holding out his hand to help me up. I stared at the hardened calluses and the slight scars on his knuckles and the slim fingers that were held there, waiting. That had been waiting a very long time. And so I did. I told them about the man the stood before me.

Manhattan 1899

Many new his name. He was the one that stood proud against those that chose to be corrupt. Even at the refuge he could be seen with his crooked grin on his face and mischief in his laughter. Yet it was his voice that startled one, it was the seriousness in his looks that made you know that this place was slowly killing him from the inside. The darkness and bleakness of the future gripping one and never letting go.

He knew the reason he stayed was to give hope to those who would never leave. Yet his dreams kept scratching at his perseverance to stay, pulling him again and again towards the window and the sight of the world outside its glass. One day he would fly away. One couldn't look at him and not know it. His body was simply poised for flight. I knew it as I knew I was the reason that tied him there. I was the one he talked to, maybe even the one that knew him better than he knew himself. For I knew what he didn't. He could live without me.

He told me once that it was easy to simply open up around me, to be himself. Something about me made him want to tell tales but tales of truth. It was like the second I came near he knew everything was fine. He always wondered out loud where he would be without me. Yet he was the one that brought me the love of storytelling, brought me the adventures inside my head. We'd get the tatters of old newspapers and make up stories in out heads, sharing them only once they had reached perfection. Weaving tales so we could escape the desolate dungeon that we spent our days in. Every sunset we'd sneak to the top of the refuge to perform before the majestically darkening sky. Only our silhouettes moving and our voices, our voices the only ones that created the illusions. There on our backs with our heads nearly touching we'd lay, lulled by the silence and the near reality of reaching out and feeling the stars.

It was after one of these sunsets, as we laid on the brink of freedom and knew that we had to return to our shackles, I turned my head to look at his profile. He seemed to nearly blend into the sky like he was disappearing before me. He moved his gaze to mine and a wisp of a smile grazed his lip, yet his eyes eerily glowed in the light of the night, ghostly and haunting. Realization hit me, I understood without truly knowing that I had to save him from his honor, his nobility, himself. Though selfishly I didn't want to give him up, I needed him. I needed him to stay right where we were at that moment, in order to stay who I was. Simply put he was my rock. Where others believed that I was his fortress of solitude, no one seemed to realize that without him I would fade. They never realized that this fortress was glass. Afterwards people just forgot that I was anything other than what they saw before them, like the me before had never existed. To me it didn't matter what anyone saw after he was gone. It just wasn't as important as the tales in my head.

So I laid there trying to soak up that one instant in time, that sunset, that face before me. For I knew that no matter how badly I yearned for time to stop and keep him here, I wouldn't be the one to hold it still. I wouldn't be the one that could break him, to kill who he was, because knowing what I was doing would break me more than letting him go ever could. After an instant of eternity I turned my head away and let the stars pull me to my feet. Standing on the edge of that roof I let emotions flee, I let that one connection to reality fray and sever. I let him go.

Turning my back on the edge I held out my hand to him and pulled him to his feet. Already there was nothing left for him to stay for. He just hadn't realized it yet.

"Jack…" he looked at me still lost in thought. "its time to fly" this time he stared at me in avid confusion and the curl of his lips became more pronounced.

"If you think I am jumping from this height and learning how to fly, then the food here has killed your common sense." I held back a smile, it scared me I was already disappearing. Quickly I buried my face in his shoulder. The smile dropped from his face, concern written on every line, every feature. His warm arms came around me and I held tight inhaling his scent and worn leather, knowing shortly he would start asking for the truth from me. _Goodbye_ my heart and head whispered. Dropping my arms I put space between us and faked cheeriness in my voice. The nights on the roof had taught me well, how to hide my thoughts behind my voice.

"Lets fly inside, it's cold out here and if we stay out much longer Snyder will find our ghosts." he laughed as I knew he would, forgetting about my show of weakness, and we beat a hasty retreat down the steps to our rooms, our prison, leaving behind the freedom that we found on the roof. Unfortunately lady luck was not enough that night. As we neared the corner of the steps Snyder voice sounded close by. Pushing Jack into the shadows, pleading to him with my eyes for him to stay and be quiet, I eased around the corner towards darker shadows. All the while his eyes asking me if I thought he was a dog. Instead I tore my gaze away, afraid that he would see in my eyes what I was about to do, yet hoping that he'd stop me that we'd find another way. Impossible. Never meeting his gaze I felt my palms break into a sweat and my chest seemed to die from the pounding of my heart, bracing my feet I took off. I knew that he would never understand, even now hurt and confusion radiated off of him cutting me like sharp knives, I knew that his anger at my actions, my betrayal, would begin to separate us. It was the beginning, a beginning I no more wanted to run to than my own death. It felt like I was weighed down, pushing against an invisible force, the force of my heart. I ran.

Brooklyn 1909

Raising my gaze I held the apparitions eyes and then looked beyond him knowing despite the smell of leather and the weight of his jacket on my shoulders, he wasn't there. Instead I looked at the captivated eyes before me, staring at the blurred faces I had lived with but didn't really know. Their stillness echoed my own causing another chill to creep down my spine. The stillness of the newsboys was unnatural yet it was my voice that held them captivated as they were. My words that took away their restless energy as they simply listened. I stared over them meeting everyone's eyes, yet the contact was never there, like skimming a book but not making the emotional attachment you would create if you actually read the whole tale.

All their eyes blurred together all except one. One outside the figment of my mind, outside my story, outside of my fading eyes. He stood in the back, not spell bound by my words but simply reading the story through my eyes. My eyes so like his, old and gray, yet his were not as cold, he was still in the present, his eyes had the warmth of life, where I was slowly vanishing behind mine. He knew all that I was telling or at least parts of it. He was the only one that ever remotely brought me back from my world. I smiled at him, a wisp of a smile, as his eyes spoke volumes to me. The eyes were always something that I could read. Maybe it was because I spent so much time weaving the tales that when I told them it was the eyes that I read instead of the book. I knew them by their eyes. And his eyes, where they looked like mine spoke like Jack's, so easily read yet so well guarded. They spoke to me more than any voice ever had or ever would.

Sighing I looked away, out the window again, pondering next how to speak the words. I heard the newsies shuffle, the silence slowly whittling away the spell. Silence was something that was not comfortable to the people of the world, the newsies before me were no different. I heard him walk towards me. And there he stood looking out the window, his gaze just above my head. Him on my right and Jack, jack hovered on my left and in my heart. Jack was the darkness and the light that never left me.

"Don't let the silence stop you" Spot murmured as he look out the window, eyes unfocused remembering nothing and everything all at once. His breathe clouded the window as he spoke again.

"Finish the truth and then maybe it can let you go, or you it." His eyelids lowered and his eyes brooded while he looked out on the ever darkening night sky. It was like telling tales on the roof, no one had touched the lamps and as we sat in the dark it was again my silhouette that told the tale, my voice that created the magic. Yet it was nowhere near the same, and it hurt. For even though my connection with the night and with Jack had been severed my ends were still searing and the trickle of blood still dripped. My mind was slowly crumbling.

"Its not the silence" I breathed out. "it's the words. They no longer come freely, like I'm twisting in the wind trying to catch pelting raindrops…" My fingers entwined, the roughened calluses and the cracked skin showing how worn I truly was, on the off chance that my eyes couldn't convey the defeat.

He looked at me then. Debating on whether he should push more, to dig his words into me or not. Finally his eyes hardened, a shutter going up and he stared at me and then away, glaring at the world itself.

"You can't keep running." he said.

I wasn't, not anymore.

Manhattan 1899

Snyder's whistle blew behind me and strong arms grabbed my waist. Kicking out wildly trying to break the hold I fought for even the chance of freedom. Instead those arms threw me to the ground knocking the wind clear out of my lungs and causing my mouth to fill with the taste of blood as I bit my tongue on impact. Gasping I spit blood on the cobble stones beneath me and waited for my heart and eyes to adjust to the bright lights that Snyder held in my face. Two figures, two men of Snyder's, roughly grabbed my arms in a bruising grip and pulled me to my feet. Snyder's face loomed in my vision, gazing past him into the shadows beyond I forced Jack to take the only choice I had left him with, a clean break away. Yet as he stood staring at me I knew even before he did that he wasn't going to take the freedom I gave him. No, while their attention was on me he simply stood there, staring me down with the coldest look I had ever seen and gradually, deliberately turned his back on me and silently went back into the refuge. Chills not related to the cold or fear of Snyder ran through my blood as I felt the distance between us freeze and harden in finality.

I turned my gaze unhurriedly back to Snyder and dully watched as he ordered my beating, punishment and seclusion, knowing that none of it mattered as long as Jack was still here. No, only that was killing me, only that would crumble and beat me. Yet it was just another step to freeing him. As my body took its punishment and then was thrown into a small dark room to be let out late tomorrow or the following day, my mind was on what would need to be done now. Somehow I knew he never would take the chance I had offered him. It wasn't in him to leave behind those that depended on him and with my betrayal it was spite that made him turn away from a chance of freedom. Spite in the face of what once had been a friendship.

Groaning I eased into a sitting position on the ground and slowly reached for a well worn piece of paper close to my heart. It had been in my bindings, wrapped tightly to my chest, pulling it out I unfolded it. Who in the past would have thought that this old letter, this old regret and the last beating would be put together to become a path to freedom for one, and maybe a path to absolution for another, not I, but as I read the words I knew by heart, that is what they were. Freedom…_for Jack._

Brooklyn 1909

"The paper, the old letter was from my brother. Sent so many years before that it was already cracking with age. Despite this it was the tool I used to force Jack to take the steps he needed to complete. Little did he know the age of the paper, for you see everything in the refuge ages with very little grace, the letter could have been no more than a couple days old…if only." A dry tear slid down my cheek at the deception I had begun so long ago and for the memory of my brother. The coldness of Jack's gaze still ate at my soul and inside I was still broken by the loss I had received in order to free him. Only Spot knew how truly broken I had become. But this anguish no longer mattered, all that had to be put aside so they, the newsboys, would know the greatest of one of their own, of one of their famous leaders. Smiling bitterly and shaking my head I continued. There was no more reason to look deep inside myself, nothing was there anymore.

"That letter, I never received one before or after, it was a single bid for a connection. A message that may very well have signaled my brothers demise." emotionlessly I reinstated it again. "His death, he simply told of what may come by the hand of those he had served, those he trusted and loved. Newboys. Without hesitancy he wrote of warring boroughs, of his sacrifices and of his desire to see me, to fight with me, to know me as I had known Jack. Never did I respond. I had lived life on the street and I knew if he was a leader he would not need me to keep him from falling. He would live or die there was nothing I could do."

"Nothing you could do even if you wanted to" Jack stated.

"Locked in the refuge, there was never a chance to contact him, never anything I could do whether I wished to or not. So I resigned myself to that. To doing nothing…"stuttering I trailed off. Deep breaths, deep. Don't think of what little you did.

"What little you could do." the phantom whispered in my ear. I straightened never looking and the Jack beside me and continued on.

"Who knows the conscious . Easily it could explain my deception, my need to save him, but look at what good deeds do, never do they go unpunished." I spoke bitterly now, filled with distain only for myself. "I did little to help my brother and years later the only thing I used his letter for was deception, not to keep his memory alive."

A whisper went through the newsies before me. Some wondering if what I spoke of was true and some simply seeing me in a different light. Something no longer to pity but to despise. I was the women who deceived their famous leader. No matter why, I was now grouped along with all those other despised women, the whores of the city, the women who use manipulation and deception as a game to win their gains, to bring down the men that life shone on. As they condemned me I looked at the intricate designs of frost on the window, that the condensation had created as it froze, tracing it with my finger until it began to melt, melting away its beauty.

"To keep Jack alive" Spot commanded the crowd, I had refused to look at, with those four words he growled. His eyes stared down at me, no longer a friend but a leader, the leader of Brooklyn, powerful, feared and respected.

"Maybe, or maybe it was selfish" Spot whipped me with his gaze. I simply looked at him indifferently and shrugged.

"Who knows what the heart and mind keep a secret even from their owner. Who knows the conscious…" lowering my gaze from the temper in his eyes I stared out the window feeling the cold weave its way under my skin.

Manhattan 1899

It had been days since I had last seen the outside. Days since I had seen anyone, or been in contact with any type of life sustaining substance. Hours since I had last been beaten. My body shivered continuously from night through the day. The only way I knew the difference of time was because of the hole in the wall high above my head, that from the right angle would bless my face for a few minutes with sunlight. My hunger now forgotten with the delirium of my mind, I sat in a ragged mess my bruised cheek against the cooling cracked floor, left only with the darkness and the condemning thoughts in my mind. I feared what my brother's letter could do, it held so much power. Even with this power I was chained to this refuge. This refuge, refuge from what? It never protected us from the outside world, it only brought the realities of human cruelty crashing down on us, made us aware of the real world fast than if we had been beggars.

The clink of keys and the lock falling to the floor was muffled by the door but the screeching of the hinges brought my thoughts to a halt. Like a moth to a flame, my eyes raised to the looming figure that appeared in the doorway. Its mammoth hands grasped my arms and half pulled me half dragged me out of solitude. Unceremoniously dumping me on the floor of the boarding room. My only thought was how loud it's footsteps were as it walked away. I lay where I was placed, in the silence for an undetermined amount of time, blank. It wasn't until the sounds of the other "prisoner" coming up the stairs towards my prone body and their loud brash voices that might inquire about my solitude that made me drag myself towards my bunk.

My arms were shaking with exertion by the time I put my full weight on them. I made it three feet towards my bunk before they decided they no longer wanted to be a part of my body and dropped out from beneath me. Smacking my chin on the hard floor I felt blood trickle down from my lip. Damn. Yet the sting of pain wasn't enough for my mind and body to reconnect. So I laid there in humiliation and defeat. My mind closed off.

Hard eyes found me there. Strong arms lifted me into the bunk. Opening my eyes I stared blankly at him. His cold eyes level with mine stared back. He had been there the whole time, his eyes condemning me.

"Are you so easily broken?" he asked me. I couldn't respond could only blink into his face. Shaking his head in disgust he stood up and smoothly turned away.

"Jack…"my voice hardly audible, but something in him heard me, heard the unvoiced plea and that part inside of him held him where he was.

"Only when someone closest to you is taken away are you broken." I looked away from him and stared untrained on the wall next to me. If only he knew I was talking about him. Glaring at me he crouched by the head of my bunk.

"Tell me." still refusing to look at him I pulled out the aged paper out of my shirt and laid it on the bed where his work worn hands rested. Turning my back to him I curled into a ball and let Jack's integrity and need to protect take over.

Brooklyn 1909

"I felt sick to my stomach as bile rose up in my throat, bile with the dirty taste of manipulation. I wasn't like other women. I couldn't stomach manipulation or deception, it ate at me from the inside and maybe that's what's slowly destroying who I pretend to be now. The burden of what I've done simply driving me down until I disappear altogether.

Jack being the honest soul that he was never saw it as deception. I doubt he even knew that with that letter I knew what he would do. Always, always he was protecting me, from others, from reality and I never let him know that not even him, famous Jack Kelly, could protect me from those things. I just let him believe and I used it against him. I used what made him Jack, what made me love him as if it was nothing. Did I ever second guess myself, did I ever regret what I did. I'd like to say I did, but in reality even if it eventually kills me I would do it again. No regrets." Lifting my chin I gazed up at Spot, with a fire in my eyes I don't think he had ever seen there before.

He nodded his head, never letting go of my gaze and never backing down. It wasn't a challenge but a brute understanding between us. We both had and would sacrifice anything for what we care about the most; him Brooklyn and me…I'd do it all for Jack. Maybe only Spot would ever understand that kind of sacrifice. The kind of sacrifice that would cripple you for life, afterwards, but made the difference to who mattered.

"Jack left the refuge that night. I heard of him many times after that but I was never again face to face with him. I know he thought he was leaving to save my brother, to protect me but he never suspected that he was saving himself. That I never needed protection except from him, from his closeness that I came to rely on, maybe even from myself. He came back to the refuge twice, much later as you well know the story. He was the same soul but a different man. He came once to rescue someone he cared for. I saw him at a distance from the shadows on the roof, my heart nearly came out of my chest as he dropped down from the roof the boarding room to the window below, with only a rope and a newsie securing him, talking of his escape and the next one to a cripple. For all I had sacrificed he was risking his freedom…but then again I never had a say in his life, even when he did remember me. They caught him once and brought him back to the refuge. I thought I'd have to again stop him from himself, but from a distance I watched him and Crutchy, the cripple I came to know. They put him in solitude afraid he'd escape again and though he never knew I stayed on the roof above his window, as close as I would ever be to him again. I knew what had happened in his meeting with Pulitzer and I knew what choice he had to make, once again he would do anything to protect those he cared for. Even if it included making a deal with the devil himself, but my heart stopped when I heard him say "We was beat when we was born." That wasn't the Jack I knew. I stayed there all night and I watched silently as he left again. I never knew I could die inside more than once. Yet I had all I had ever hoped for; he was living his live in the present, never again to remember the past, never again to look back and see who I had become. He forgot me the way I had always hoped life would pull its blinders over his eyes once he got out of the refuge. He was Free."

I stared at the ghost next to me as I finished my tale with the first real smile, that reached my eyes, in a long time. Shrugging myself out of his weather worn jacket I left it disappearing with his fading image.

"Goodbye Jack" I finally got to say it on my terms and I finally got to let him go, whispering this as the silence around me engulfed any noise in the room I pushed myself from my seat at the window. Not once looking at Spot, I walked slowly through the crowd of newboys who had come to hear my final story. Who had come to the awakening of Manhattan. Yet I doubted if I ever would be awake again and with this thought I made my way out into the night.

"Goodbye" my eyes meeting the man in the shadow, and I continued into the dark.

The fire escape up to the roof loomed as if death itself dared me to challenge it. Finding the strength , that I knew was my desperation to see the open sky again, I climbed the steps and as I reached the top I was met with the memory of the last time I had truly seen Jack, the last time I had truly seen those eyes in the shadows.

Manhattan 1899

With the other "Prisoners" I was rounded into the refuge cart, for our dramatic release by senator Roosevelt. For me it didn't matter if I was free because I now lived in my mind, maybe a prisoner or maybe for once I was finally free. At that time I hadn't yet decided. One such as I was no longer impressed with dramatics. That was what Snyder had used to terrify us along with his version of reality. I was finally numb to it all, but the energy of the young and the cripple next to me, at being freed, was almost enough to bring a smile to my eyes.

As we drove through the rally I respected the life Jack had chosen, the leader he had become. I watch him through the bars as realization dawned on him, he no longer had to run from his past. He had a life, one anyone would be envious of and one anyone who knew his story could respect him for.

Climbing down from the cart I watched the cripple lock Snyder away and join Jack and his new family. Slowly as I blended into the crowd, away from his glowing eyes, from the revived life in his eyes. I knew that look in his eyes was all I had to live for. To finally see it again, that was enough for me. I turned and walked over the bridge to Brooklyn, never to return to Manhattan, the city of my given name.

Brooklyn 1909

"He was alive" I breathed into drowning sun and the night sky that was opening up before me like a book. where as my book, my story was coming to a close. Laying on the roof, I felt myself slowly slip away and vanish.


End file.
